Quality tourists,probably ruined many good businesses and businessmen in their Evil pursuit of money.what they don't understand is you will never have power or influence as a farang in Thailand,you will be a cash cow until forever until you either run out of brown envelopes or the long arm of the law comes and gets you.thais will always have the upper hand full stop.i can imagine one saying to the police,I'll give you big money and you let me go,so pays big money and the copper just gives the keys to his mate and says,here you can have a go and see what you can get,im off on holiday.at last these big fat cat Mafia have become big fat fish for the police.i hope they all lose the lot and the police have found a nice way of robbing the robbers...som nom nah TIT not Moscow.

It is quite impressive that the Thai authorities have cooperated with foreign agencies to track down, arrest and deport these guys.

What doesn't impress is the ongoing illusion that these guys mostly did their evil empire building all on their own. In the whole article, there's only a vague reference to one of these mafia guys being enabled by bent local officials but it is buried in a description which for the most part handily matches that of many married foreigners in Thailand.

During his time here, he married a Thai woman, had four children, learned to speak Thai, built a rapport with many local state officials and had become an influential figure in Phuket. The suspect was handed over to Russian police, who took him back to his home country to face prosecution.

What would be impressive and lend much more credence to this parody of 'a new broom sweeps clean' is the naming, shaming, arrest and prosecution of each and every amphur, immigration policeman, army general, lawyer and otherwise untouchable Thai that enabled and thus made money off the back of these foreign slobs.